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Bad weather blamed for islandwide power outage
The entire island of Saipan was plunged into a power blackout in the early morning hours yesterday due to the bad weather that caused a heavy electrical fault on a feeder.
A Commonwealth Utilities Corp. post on its Facebook page stated that it experienced a heavy electrical fault on Feeder 1, 2nd Partial at 1:24am yesterday due to the inclement weather.
It said the fault caused an electrical surge, which tripped the Power Plant 1 station service and the Aggreko Plant, causing a generator overload at Power Plant 1that triggered the generator protective devices at the facility, resulting in an islandwide power outage.
Power generation staff immediately assessed the conditions at the power plant and initiated restarting procedures once it was determined that it was all clear.
“CUC line crew were able to isolate the problem and make the necessary repairs to re-energize the feeder circuits to full restoration at different times starting from 2:37am to 4:15am,” the CUC post said.
In a later interview with CUC executive director Gary Camacho about the power interruption, he said, “We’re going to make the necessary adjustments, and we’ll continue to do that. It’s unfortunate, but we’re happy knowing that nobody was hurt, as this was a very dangerous situation.”
“In addition, we’re very fortunate to have highly skilled and qualified people at the power plants, performing all the work necessary to be able to quickly re-energize the system. I’m very pleased with the work of the staff, and I’m very happy with the fact that we have a lot of highly qualified people in CUC ensuring that we minimize all interruption.”
CUC customers in the areas of As Gonno, Koblerville, Afetnas, San Antonio, Chalan Piao, Chalan Kanoa, Susupe, Oleai and San Jose will be experiencing low pressure to no water as CUC water operations personnel works toward finding the cause of the Isley TSA issue. Customers are advised to conserve water during this outage until services are fully restored.
